Let's Play a Game of Scrub

“Let’s play a game of Scrub.” That would be my old buddy, Bernie Lee, who probably taught me more about baseball from the time I was 6 years old until I was 8, when Bernie moved away, than anyone else. Bernie wasn’t the only one that taught me baseball. There were brothers Fred and Rudy Brewster, Steve Hicks, Danny McAvoy, Steve and Leslie McKimmson and many others. But Bernie was the main guy. He had the greatest passion for the game and was always thinking of a way to play ball in the summer. In the fall, of course, it was Bernie that taught my brother Dan and me to play football.

Bernie was 2 years older than me and he was kind of my neighborhood hero. Whatever Bernie did was good enough for me. Remember when you were 6 or 7 years old and an 8 or 9 year old seemed like practically a teenager? Well, that was Bernie. And boy was he good at sports. I figured he was ready for the pros any day. In the evenings I would go to the Little League Park and watch Bernie play. He was a stocky kid and was the catcher for his team. Back in those days the catcher turned his ball cap around and wore it backwards so he could put his catcher’s mask on. I thought wearing your cap backwards looked really cool, but only catchers did it. That was before the day when catchers wore protective helmets. I could only watch because back in 50’s there was no T-ball or anything like that for 6 and 7 year olds. Little League started at 8 years old, period. You just had to wait until you were old enough to play. But that was OK because as I’ve mentioned before, we played sandlot games all day anyway. Heck, I could get in 20 or 30 at bats on the sandlot.

Anyway, Scrub was a really fun game of baseball that we could play for hours. I think Bernie said he learned it from his dad, who played ball in the 30’s and 40’s. Scrub was also called “Workup” by some of the guys. The rules were simple and it worked best when you had 12 or 13 guys. Here’s how it went. We would fill in all 9 positions on the field then let the extra 3 or 4 guys be the batters. Everyone wanted to hit (although I loved playing the field too) so the incentive, or goal, was to work your way up to be a batter. Batters got to stay at bat as long as they didn’t make an out. If you made an out, you went to right field. The right fielder went to center, center to left, left to 3rd base, 3rd to shortstop, short to 2nd base, 2nd to 1st base, 1st to pitcher, pitch to catcher, and the catcher got to be a batter. We just rotated and we would sprint to our new position. A special rule was if you were playing the field and caught the batters fly ball or line drive you just switched positions with the batter. This made for great catches of liners and fly’s since you got to be a batter immediately. Guys would let it all hang out to catch a fly ball.

When I became a PE teacher later in life, I introduced this game to some of my classes. But since my classes usually had 25-30 kids it wasn’t always best. (Unless I had two games of Scrub going on at once). It worked great with my elementary classes because I would throw an orange disc on the ground to show them where they were to be for their position. Once I taught ‘em the rotation, the kids would hustle to the next disc.

Looking back, I realize it was a terrific way to learn the game. I got to play every position on the field and learned how to cover each base, take relay throws, and be the cutoff man. I learned all that from my buddies, and most of all, Bernie. Wherever you are today, thanks Bernie. And thanks to www.chiefpigskin.com for allowing me to tell my stories.

When Baseball was King

I love football. I've always loved football, ever since I was about six years old. And I love getting on www.chiefpigskin.com to see what’s new. But let me tell you, baseball has always been a close second. You have to remember, I grew up in the 50’s and 60’s when baseball was still king. Especially in the late 50’s, when I was just starting to learn the game, baseball was truly the national pastime. I first became interested in the game in 1957 when the heroes were guys like Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Mickey Mantle, Stan Musial, and Warren Spahn. Collecting baseball cards was something every little boy did, and every boy had his own glove.

How many of you older fellas out there can remember this? When I was a kid I rode my bicycle everywhere and I never went anywhere without my glove. I always hung my glove on my handlebars, so that if I saw a game going on in a vacant lot or on the school grounds I could just get off my bike and join the game. I would get up early in the morning, eat some cereal, and tell my mom, “See you later.” I was off to join the local baseball game. How did I know there would be a baseball game going on? Are you kidding me? There were always some games going on. I would play ball all day, come home at night and eat my supper, then put on my Little League uniform to play more baseball.

Regular baseball games are not all we played. We played games of workup, sometimes called scrub, or we played games of 500, wiffleball, cork ball, or any other game we could make up. We didn't need adults, and we didn't need their supervision, telling us how to play the game. We just played. We played “right field is out” if we had to, and we had invisible base runners if we didn’t have enough players. We did whatever it took.

The game of 500 was a good learning experience for all of us. How many of you remember that? One guy would toss the ball up and hit it out of his hand to the rest of us five or six guys playing out in the field. If you caught a fly ball it was worth 100 points, a one hopper was worth 75, a two hopper worth 50, and ground balls worth 25. The first guy in the field to reach 500 or more points got to be the new batter. We use to fall all over each other going after that ball. It taught me how to get a good jump so that I could beat the other guys to the ball and it taught me how to catch fly balls and grounders. It taught me to be aggressive and out jump the other guys in trying to catch the ball. Heck, it was just a lot of fun. If you dropped a fly ball, you lost 100 points. And if you dropped or muffed a one hopper you lost 75 points, and so on. So you had to make sure that when you got to the ball, you fielded it cleanly. We could play 500 all morning and all afternoon. As long as it was some form of baseball.

I realize that these days kids are a lot different. I'm not going to criticize them for playing video games all the time. I probably would've done the same. So as I look back I'm glad we didn't have some of the things that kids today have. I don't think I would've had as much fun. It was a different time, wasn't it? By the way, if you’re not sure what a game of Scrub is, I’ll tell you about it next week. Catch you later.